[en][blog] history of the collective, why the name
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# Short history of the project
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<small>2021-11-25 | [@andrea](/@andrea)</small>
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We get asked that question more often recently, so I've decided to put an answer in writing 😉
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How did pronouns.page start?
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Well, it started circa two years ago, and in quite a different linguistic reality than English.
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You see, while in English referring to a person in a way that doesn't force them into a gender binary
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is basically a question of replacing a personal pronoun in its five forms (eg. they/them/their/theirs/themselves)
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and a few gendered nouns (eg. boy/girl to kid or enby), in Polish it's way more complicated.
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Even a sentence as simple as “I did” or “I'm hungry” requires a person to disclose their gender.
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Almost every person-describing noun is gendered too, and for many of them the masculine version is treated as the “default”,
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with women being shamed for using those “strange” feminine versions.
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Not only is it all complicated, but also unpopular and new. Trying to un-gender Polish is quite a linguistic revolution.
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(If you're interested in an overview (in English) of how the solutions look like, check out [zaimki.pl/english](https://zaimki.pl/english)).
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In November 2019 I stumbled upon [a blog post](https://www.przemyslenia-maniaka.pl/2019/11/maniak-marudzi-27-niebinarne-tumaczenia.html)
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in which the author criticised the Polish translation of She-Ra for ciswashing and erasing the gender of a character called Double Trouble.
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It was a constructive criticism, it included a list of ideas on how to translate a character that uses they/them into Polish
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without arbitrarily assigning them a binary gender. My brain, having always been fed with the assumption that such a thing is impossible,
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now almost exploded with joy! It's a very analytical brain, though, so it wanted to have a more structured collection
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of those ideas. To put them into grammar table, to test every word, to consider every grammatical form, to fill in every gap.
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So I wrote [a blog post of my own](https://avris.it/blog/genderneutralizacja-polszczyzny), in which I attempted to do just that.
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But I wasn't really happy with the result. My own conclusions back then were that I don't see any bright future
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for the nonbinary forms in Polish that wouldn't sound unnatural or be doomed to be wildly unpopular. Oh, how wrong I was!
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Enter [@Ausir](/@Ausir), a translator whom I've followed on Twitter and who's fascinated with how nonbinary forms get translated
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into different languages, mainly Polish. He was gathering examples from literature and publishing them in a Google Docs document
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– and they confirmed that indeed it is possible to do it in an elegant way that doesn't erase nonbinary identities.
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Around the same time [@Sybil](/@Sybil) was coming up with a solution to a similar, yet separate problem
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– how to extend the person-describing nouns into a system that also includes the grammatical neuter.
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They wanted to describe their nonbinary partner in a way that doesn't impose a binary gender on them
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– but in Polish they had no other option than to expand the dictionaries in the name of love!
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They created [a funpage on Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/neutratywy) where they shared their proposals.
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And the three of us have joined our forces to create one bigger project: [zaimki.pl](https://zaimki.pl)
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– a website that [started very humbly](https://web.archive.org/web/20200725174439/https://zaimki.pl/),
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basically as a Polish version of [pronoun.is](https://pronoun.is/), to be extended with
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[a text corpus](https://zaimki.pl/korpus) and [a dictionary of nouns](https://zaimki.pl/neutratywy).
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I [announced it on Twitter](https://twitter.com/AvrisIT/status/1286400337465802752) on June 23rd, 2020
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and was absolutely astounded by the overwhelmingly positive response.
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The project almost immediately [attracted attention of queer media](https://queer.pl/artykul/204685/zaimkipl-strona-jezyk-polski-niebinarnosc).
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More people were helping out with creating it – and [on November 22nd, 2020 we gathered](https://twitter.com/neutratywy/status/1332403345542221827)
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together online to discuss how would such a cooperation work. We came up with [the name of the collective](/blog/why-the-name)
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of the collective and agreed on a non-hierarchical, anarcha-queer structure.
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Thanks to their hard work new features and language forms were getting developed.
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Arguably the biggest one of them being the ability to create an account and an easily sharable card
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with one's names, pronouns and liked/disliked words.
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This feature was met with enthusiasm and prompted new feature requests: can we also have such a card in English?
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So [@Ausir](/@Ausir), [@Szymon](/@Szymon) and [I](/@andrea) translated the website to English,
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researched the most popular neopronouns, looked up literature that uses it –
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and on December 5th, 2020 [we announced the start of an English version](https://twitter.com/PronounsPage/status/1335322304931393536).
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It's the only one initially created by people who use the given language as their additional one (although later it was proof-read by native-speakers too).
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For all the others we were contacted by their native-speakers who offered help preparing the content,
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while we provided the technical tools and support.
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Today, the project covers 9 languages 🤯, has almost 300 000 users 🤯, and the Polish team regularly gets invited by the media, including those mainstream 🤯.
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And that's despite it being only two years old and having been created entirely by a non-profit, non-hierarchical group of volunteer activists.
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I'm in awe in how far we've all come, and I'm eternally grateful to all the people who keep making it happen! ❤️
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# Why the name “Neutral Language Council”?
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<small>2021-11-25 | [@andrea](/@andrea)</small>
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For Polish speakers the name of our collective is a very clear reference – but not necessarily to anyone else.
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So here's a short explanation, if you're interested:
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_(Polish, more nuanced version, is available [here](https://zaimki.pl/blog/sk%C4%85d-nazwa-kolektywu))_
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There’s an “official language regulating organ” in Poland, and it's called [“Polish Language Council”](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_Language_Council).
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It was founded by an act of parliament and its members are some of the most well respected linguists and other experts in the country.
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And although its role is _technically_ purely advisory, it’s often being treated by the society as having a decisive role in what’s _allowed_ in Polish and what’s not.
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As much as using “singular they” might still raise some eyebrows,
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English nonbinary and gender neutral language could be called pretty well established when seen in comparison to Polish.
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Trying to come up with, assemble, structure and promote ways for enbies to express themselves in Polish without being forced into a binary
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is quite a linguistic revolution.
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A common criticism of our activism is that “people _can’t_ talk like that, because PLC didn't _allow_ it!”.
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Which is quite a misunderstanding of both what the PLC is _supposed_ to be
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and of how sympathetic towards the nonbinary community some of its members are _in practice_.
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And also of how the process of language evolution works in general 😅
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So… we called ourselves a “language council” too!
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To bring attention to the fact that language is constantly being created and developed by its users.
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To the fact that the changes in a language can, are, and since the dawn of humanity have been happening from the bottom up.
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We're nonbinary users of languages – and we have every right to use our languages to express our nonbinary-ness ✊
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@ -427,6 +427,9 @@ contact:
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We are a queer collective dedicated to assembling, researching, shaping and promoting
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gender neutral and nonbinary language.
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We also support actions towards equality and social justice.
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extra:
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- '{/blog/project-history=Short history of the project}'
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- '{/blog/why-the-name=Why the name?}'
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logo: 'Logo of the collective is a combination of the transgender symbol and a speech bubble that symbolises language.'
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members: 'Current members'
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member: 'Member of the collective'
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